The New Discussion on the Evaluation Method and Indexes of Ballast Quality for High-Speed Railway

It is important to adopt a simple and convenient method to evaluate the ballast's qualities, which has significant economic and practical values for developing high-speed railway, improving train's speed, laying the continuously welded rail track at the new line, and the train's safely and steadily running in China. Through the general study of the existing indexes to evaluate ballast quality and ballast rheologic mechanics characteristic, we find that the ballast rheologic mechanics characteristic can reflect not only the mechanical characteristics of ballast particles, but also the ballast operational functions. The related parameters can be easily achieved by a simple, conventional and practical equipment. In view of this, a testing method and some indexes are given to evaluate the quality of ballast by the ballast rheologic mechanics characteristic.